Webinars

Simulation is an effective tool for analyzing probability models as well as for facilitating understanding of concepts in probability and statistics. Unfortunately, implementing a simulation from scratch often requires users to think about programming issues that are not relevant to the simulation itself. We have developed a Python package called Symbulate (https://github.com/dlsun/symbulate) which provides a user friendly framework for conducting simulations involving probability models. The syntax of Symbulate reflects the "language of probability" and makes it intuitive to specify, run, analyze and visualize the results of a simulation. Moreover, Symbulate's consistency with the mathematics of probability reinforces understanding of probabilistic concepts.  This webinar will demonstrate Symbulate's use with a variety of probability concepts and problems, including: probability spaces; events; discrete and continuous random variables; joint, conditional, and marginal distributions; stochastic processes; and more.

Since data analysis is becoming important across disciplines, the ASA Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice, which were updated in 2016, can serve to introduce all students in quantitative disciplines to critical concepts of responsible data analysis, interpretation, and reporting. The Guidelines contain elements that are suitable, and important, components of training for undergraduates whether or not they are statistics majors, to prepare them for ethical quantitative work. The Guideline principles interact, and sometimes must be prioritized. Therefore, neither the simple distribution of –nor an encouragement to memorize- the Guidelines can promote the necessary level of awareness. This presentation will introduce ethical reasoning as a learnable, improvable skill set that can provide an entry point to working with the 2016 revised ASA Ethical Guidelines.

In this webinar, I will describe a classroom activity where pairs of students hand scrape data from cars.com, ingest these data into R, then carry out analyses of the relationships between price, mileage, and model year for a selected type of car. This early in the semester activity can help illustrate the statistical problem solving process. The "Less Volume, More Creativity" approach utilized by the mosaic package facilitates the analysis with a minimal amount of syntax. Key concepts that are introduced and reinforced including data ingestion, multivariate thinking through graphical visualizations, and regression modeling. Extensions and additional use of the dataset will be discussed along with potential pitfalls. Project Files: https://github.com/Amherst-Statistics/Cars-Scraping-Webinar

Regression to the mean, also known as "the regression effect," is an important but sometimes overlooked topic in introductory statistics. We will discuss the regression effect and how to teach it. We will also consider a number of examples of the "regression fallacy," in which people who are ignorant of the regression effect make up ad hoc (and sometimes very misleading) explanations for what they see in data.

18M+ open datasets exist today, and growth is accelerating. But these data sets live in data portals without common taxonomies or architectures, and must first be cleaned and prepared by data users. Human and computers normalize, extract meaning, and identify correlations, but this work is siloed: used for one project, then lost forever, only to be repeated from scratch by the next person to touch the data. Open data can help us rise to humanity’s toughest challenges, but only if we maximize its network effect. To build the web of Linked Data, we have to start by connecting the people who are working with data. Visit: https://data.world/

In 2014 Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) published a book entitled "Past, Present, and Future of Statistical Science" that contains 52 short chapters contributed by past winners of one of the COPSS Awards. The goal of the book (which is freely downloadable from the COPSS website or http://tinyurl.com/copss-ppf) was to "showcase the breadth and vibrancy of statistics, to describe current challenges and new opportunities, to highlight the exciting future of statistical science, and to provide guidance for future generations of statisticians (page xvii)." In this webinar, I will describe how these chapters were integrated into a theoretical statistics course to help students see the big picture and potential for statistics.

As enrollment in introductory statistics courses across the country rises, more instructors for these courses are needed. Many statistics courses are now taught by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). Little is known, however, about the training needs of GTAs to foster active learning and promote conceptual understanding, critical recommendations of the GAISE guidelines to improve undergraduate learning in statistics. This talk will discuss changes to our lab activities to incorporate GAISE recommendations of teaching for conceptual understanding, foster active learning, and integrating real data. We will also discuss initial findings concerning the struggles GTAs have with connecting their theoretical knowledge to conceptual ideas concerning confidence intervals for one population proportion. The material is based on work supported by NSF DUE 1504587.

This webinar will provide a guide to creating a user-adaptable electronic textbook incorporating data visualization, data science, and other relevant pedagogical concepts into your introductory statistics course. We present our own introductory statistics and data science textbook available at http://moderndive.com that: Focuses on the entirety of the data/science pipeline from importing data to visualizing and summarizing data to inferential techniques and developing students as effective data storytellers Blurs the line between lecture and lab Uses freely available modern, rich, and complex data sources Leverages resampling and simulation to build statistical inference concepts Most importantly, provides complete customizability to the instructor and reproducibility to the student We’ll discuss how collaboration and crowd-sourcing have and will play a role in our textbook going forward and other open-source materials we are creating to better support introductory statistics/data science students learning the skills and tools that statisticians/data scientists are using today. For the complete powerpoint presentation of today's webinar: http://bit.ly/moderndive-causeweb

We present actual data gathered from a café run by business students. We give examples of time series forecasting and data mining applications, and frame problems as managerial questions to emphasize data-driven decision making.

In this webinar we will present our experiences and provide tips on how to implement a flipped classroom approach we call "Just-in-Time Teaching." In this method in and out of classroom activities are reversed; student preparation before class includes watching a brief lecture via video and responding to web-based discussion questions designed to elicit common misunderstandings students have, and class time is reserved for guided practice to reinforce new knowledge.